


Outreach

by Netter



Series: Science Night [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Daddy Issues, F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netter/pseuds/Netter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Hill and Jane Foster shared certain things in common. Including a dislike of one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outreach

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is the follow-up to my fic “Science Night.” Things will make more sense if you’ve read that first but what you most need to know is that it’s the November after the Battle of New York. Deputy Director Hill has taken over Phil Coulson’s duties as the Avengers’ liaison. It’s not a natural fit for her, but she’s trying, as are they. 
> 
> For non-American readers, Thanksgiving is a holiday held the fourth Thursday of November. For some families, it’s the biggest holiday of the year for family togetherness.
> 
> Happy reading!

When Jane Foster was born, her father enjoyed a joint appointment to the astronomy and electrical engineering departments at Culver University. He built telescopes by day and spent half his nights with Eric Selvig testing them. This left Jane Foster’s mother with most of the night feedings and diaper changes, but she’d known the man she’d married. And it couldn’t last forever.

It didn’t. She fell asleep and wrapped her car around a tree on the way home from the supermarket when Jane was four months old. Jane was miraculously unharmed.

So Dr. Foster did what any man would do in his situation. He brought the only person in life that mattered anymore to work to be nannied by the grad students who were too expendable to complain. And—quickly—too attached to think of it.

Because Jane Foster was the type of child that sucked adults in. Smiling, curious, attentive, and imaginative. She never quite learned to get on with other children. Perhaps because she saw so little of them until she started kindergarten. Perhaps it was how her Barbies tried to teach the others geometry. Perhaps it had most to do with being the princess of two major university labs as well as the center of her father’s universe.

Colleagues mostly described the elder Dr. Foster as a brilliant, charming workaholic. Occasionally they threw in a word like ‘strong-willed.’  His grad students added ‘egomaniac.” And “monster.” And “I would’ve sworn, if it weren’t for Jane, that the man had no genuine human feelings.”

Her father knew, and made sure everyone else knew, that Jane was special. Jane _was_ special. Jane never doubted that. Jane never doubted how much her father had loved her. Jane never thought her father had blamed her for her mother’s death even though it was exactly as much her fault as Maria’s mother’s had been hers. Which was to say not at all because they’d both been babies with no ability to influence the world.

Maria had to stop it. This was awful. She was being _ridiculous_.

The last glass of wine had been a mistake. And maybe the one before that. At least she was off tomorrow.

Foster had always irritated her. How she had convinced a bright, capable young woman to dedicate her life to ensuring that Jane ate. How she and Jarvis for some reason got on like a house on fire. How life continued to teach her that people would come out of the woodwork to take care of her like she was a child. 

And now Maria was at the Tower eating Its-Just-Thursday-Maria Dinner with the Avengers, and why hadn’t her daddy loved her?  She’d gotten over that a long time ago. This didn’t make any sense.

So she did what anyone would do in her situation and pulled Pepper aside after the pumpkin pie. She thought Pepper was her friend now. But Pepper hadn’t said the word out loud, so she wasn’t sure. Maria couldn’t remember how ‘friends’ worked with people who hadn’t risked death with you. 

“I hate Dr. Foster. I need you to tell me how to make it stop.”

Pepper laughed. “Are you serious? You are. Why would you hate Jane?”

“Why doesn’t everyone hate the manic pixie dream scientist?”

Suddenly, it shamed her to say it out loud. She wasn’t just being ridiculous; she was being ungrateful. Maria had made her own luck but not all her own opportunities. That was something. And if it came down to it, her past was even garden variety for _SHIELD_. Certainly nothing that would turn heads at Stark Tower. Not that it was a competition, except that it would be.

Pepper seemed to get it, though, because Pepper was perfect and understood everything. “Oh. She’s lived a bit of a parallel life, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.” She hated this. 

 “Well…take care of her the way the rest of us do.” As if that solved anything.

“I am not force feeding a grown woman pop tarts,” she growled. She wouldn’t. She had limits. 

Pepper nodded. “OK, or you could ask her to teach you something. That’s a useful strategy for making friends, too.”

“She teaches me in her briefings; I still find her irritating. I don’t want to be her friend. I need to be a rational person and a good liaison to this Tower.”

“Or you could aim higher,” Pepper snapped, seeming to startle them both.  “I shouldn’t have said it that way. I know it’s hard, I know I can’t imagine how hard. But what do you want me to tell you, Maria? You want me to tell you how not to feel things. If I knew the answer to that one, believe me, Tony would have gotten it out of me ten years ago, don’t you think?”

“You think I need to make her my friend.” No. No no no.

“I think you need to be friendly. And do friendly-type things. And see if friendship is possible. How about trying to get her down to the gym? Maybe you can try to teach her something. Natasha is worried about her ability to defend herself.” With that little lilt to her voice and lift to her eyebrows.

“That’s a blatant attempt to push my responsibility button.”

“Right out there on your sleeve, very conveniently located, Deputy Director.”  No one did kindly, self-satisfied tranquility quite like Pepper Potts.

“Fine…and thank you.” She. Didn’t. Want. To. Spend. Time. With. That. Woman.

“Always happy to help, Maria. See you Monday for lunch on the carrier?”

Of course she would. Maria always made time for Pepper. Even the Monday after a holiday weekend.

******

She decided to ask Foster to go to a rock climbing gym because she thought it would be healthy for her, to know she could resist dropping the woman. And while Jane did need to get out of the lab, Maria needed to leave the self-defense training to someone else: she didn't know if she could resist dropping the woman. 

Jane seemed wary at the attention but agreed without asking awkward questions. 

As it turned out, Jane loved rock climbing and was ridiculously competitive with herself, downright _sullen_ when she couldn’t manage something. She was light and flexible—she and Bruce did yoga together, it seemed—and thoughtful with her movements. But she was also tiny, so tiny. If she couldn’t reach her next hold, she would jump, occasionally falling off, even if she knocked into something rather painfully on the way.

Maria held the rope so she didn’t fall _down_ when she fell off because Maria wasn’t evil.  And—less importantly—because Jane wasn’t either.  Jane loved solving a problem.  So much so that she completely disregarded her own safety. If she even recognized the danger. Maria could work with that. And it was easy to see, watching her learn to do this, the child that had so captivated the grad students.  The enthusiasm and determination.  It was easier to be caught up by it. 

Jane caught her breath after a hard climb and looked at Maria.  “Your turn, but do you mind if we take a break?” Maria nodded over to the bench with their water bottles.

Maria plotted out her next route. She hadn’t climbed in years, not that it had ever been a huge thing for her. Maria chose hobbies with quantifiable results. Like target shooting. She could look at her target and tell whether or not she’d had a good round. Too much art to climbing. Too difficult to express why she’d had a good climb or a bad one.

“If this is some sort of scientist outreach thing, you should ask Darcy next.” Maria startled out of her thoughts to see Jane sitting there, thumbing the label on her water bottle nervously.

She could still avoid the awkward questions. “Why’s that?”

Jane pinned her with the look so recently focused on the rock wall. The one Maria’d seen when Jane, Bruce, and Tony argued a theory. If a problem managed to capture Dr. Foster’s attention, it would not go unexplored.

“Is it? A scientist outreach? I’m trying to work out why you asked me here when you barely talk to me, but Darcy’s hurt you didn’t ask her too, and I cannot afford to piss off Darcy.” Maria tried to answer but Jane continued on, “I will never in my whole life find someone as competent as Darcy willing to do that job in the madhouse I live in. At any salary. Everything will implode.” Jane was right and not only about her own lab: Stark Tower would cease to function without Darcy. Or erupt in major violence.

Clearly something had turned off her brain. “Is that the best thing for Darcy, though? Being your assistant? She’s twenty-four and working an incredibly glamorous dead-end job. Making no outside friends or work connections. If this isn’t what she wants to do with her life, she needs to be looking for something else now before ten years have passed with nothing concrete to put on her resume beyond ‘can make coffee’ and ‘understands basic astrophysics.’ Or a horribly-fumbled disaster makes her association with the Avengers a ‘do not hire’ rather than a plus. Or everyone is too dead to give her a reference.”

Jane blinked. “She types a bazillion words a minute and who knows what else. She’ll be fine. Why  are we here?”

Why wouldn’t she give up already? “I don’t know you very well, and I need to know you at least a little, like everyone else in the Tower.” Not a lie.” If you think Darcy would like some one-on-one time—“

“You are bullshitting me, and I’m not leaving you alone with Darcy ever again!” Fierce Foster. Maria remembered talking with Phil after he confiscated her lab equipment. About this tiny astrophysicist who shook her fists at him and raged and stormed and had to be restrained by her colleagues as the suits took everything she’d worked for her whole life. Phil had been sad for her, a little, but SHIELD did what they did. Maria cleared her throat.

“Jane, I’m not going to take Darcy away from you.” Jane narrowed her eyes. “First of all because Darcy is a person and not property—“

“Should I feel lucky SHIELD recognizes the distinction?” Maria clenched her jaw, ground her teeth together until it felt like they’d crack.

She needed a break. “My climb.”

Jane started shouting out corrections and instructions to Maria’s technique, which she hadn’t been doing before the argument. _Switch your feet. No, put your right hand up first, can you see that triangle one?_ Maria wondered if Jane were trying to be catty, but if so, Jane clearly did not understand how catty was done at all. Her information was incredibly helpful.

Once Maria was back on the ground, they stood looking at each other. Jane broke the silence. “We don’t like each other much, do we?”

“Doesn’t seem like we need to to work well together. You have a natural understanding of this. The directions were useful.”

Jane had that same wary look from before. “Yeah, it…I don’t know, it seems to fit the way I see the world, I guess. I’m not really sporty. This seems a little more like math with your body.”

Maria would never have thought to describe it that way. “Interesting. Makes sense.”

Jane played with the rope. “Listen, I am going to try to stop taking it out on you that I’m so conflicted about selling out to SHIELD and Stark Industries for funding. It was _my_ decision.” She sighed. “Even if I didn’t have a lot of options.” Maria could sympathize. Lots of agents could.

But she wasn’t sure how to answer. This wasn’t about her dad. For the most part, Maria _was_ past thinking she could have fixed her father if she’d been different. If life had taught her anything, it was that sometimes people _broke_ and that some of them couldn’t be fixed. Or wouldn’t. In any case, her dad hadn’t been, but that didn’t have anything to do with her.

The problem with Jane wasn’t her father. The real problem was that Maria missed the only loving family she’d ever had. The real problem was that Thor was coming back and Phil Coulson wasn’t. Someday Jane would find the Rainbow Connection, and the lovers and dreamers would continue their story.

Hers was over. What she had now was five—working on six—Life Model Decoy versions of an agent that all wanted to tell her how magical a place Tahiti was no matter how many memories IT removed. _We’re sorry, Deputy Director. He thought about Tahiti a lot. And he thought about thinking about Tahiti, it’s complicated. Maybe with the next update we’ll get it all..._

There was nothing magical about Tahiti. It was the most real place she’d ever been. It was so humid she couldn’t brush the tangles out of her hair the entire week. She’d thought the beach would be sandy, but it hadn’t been; it was bits of washed-up reef that had poked the hell out of her feet because she’d forgotten her flip flops. The water had sounded—fizzy?  Like Rice Krispies? Maria wasn’t sure how she’d describe it—when they’d snorkel. They’d thought it was the fish eating on the reef, but who knew? The fish—there had been so many _spectacular_ types of fish. Phil had wanted to break she didn’t know how many international laws to bring back—   

“Maria…? Maria, are you OK?” She’d never seen Jane this…concerned.

She blinked and cleared her throat again. “No, but I’ll try to stop taking my problems out on you, too. You have far less control over mine than I do over yours.”

Fortunately, that appeased Dr. Foster. Perhaps she’d grown accustomed to people with secrets.  “Yeah…yeah, OK. My climb. Do you think we could put in a wall at the Tower? The gym there is pretty tall.”

“I don’t see why not. SHIELD may have an old one in storage. Nothing wrong with it; they were upgrading.” It had been a good wall.

Jane lit up. “Oh, please, please, please let me tell Tony we’re getting dusty second-hand training equipment from SHIELD’s storage room.  _Please_.”

That was something to look forward to.

“As long as I can be there.”

**Author's Note:**

> Since I’ve mentioned it in both fics now—“Rainbow Connection” was written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher and made famous by Kermit the Frog.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
